Dbq White Citizen's Harvel

After the Supreme Court struck down ‘separate but equal’ in Brown vs Board of Education in 1954 civil rights began to advance at a rate startling to many Southern whites. Whilst opposition was less successful than after the Emancipation Proclamation during the 19th and early 20th century White Citizen’s Councils by ‘unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo’ hindered progress. White Citizen’s Councils were first set up in Mississippi but soon spread across the South. They were founded primarily in opposition to the desegregation of schools and ‘hope[ed] that white people would be outraged that their children had to share classrooms with African-Americans and would organize to
resist racial desegregation and restore white supremacist rule.’ Mississippi became their stronghold where ‘the movement, led by Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Tom P. Brady, grew to encompass virtually the state's entire white business class’. This economic power is reminiscent of that used by the Democratic Party almost 75 years earlier to retake the legislature. It allowed the White Citizens Councils to create a climate where ‘Blacks in favour of integration or seen trying to register black voters would lose their jobs […] white businessmen would face boycotts and politicians would lose votes if they were believed to be sympathetic to African-Americans' efforts at integration’ .